How to Set Up Your Company for Recruitment Success

Today, drivers are more accessible than ever. You can reach drivers 24/7 because of the internet. So why is it that companies across the nation are struggling to recruit talent? The problem may be that companies are not setting up their recruitment team for success. In order to effectively find qualified drivers online your company needs to utilize digital marketing specialists. Either hire specialists in-house or work with an agency. Recruiters have enough to worry about, don’t put too much on their plate by expecting them to also become digital marketers. The more time recruiters spend online trying to implement digital marketing strategies, the less time they can spend recruiting. Here is how to set up your company for recruitment success.

Recruiters Need to Recruit!

Recruiters are intended to contact quality drivers, get them through orientation, and keep them in the company. Digital marketing should not be one of their responsibilities. Recruiter efficiency will be maximized in a system where they are provided a pool of warm leads. Then the recruiters can focus on phoning.

Kelly Anderson talks about distracted recruiters in his webinar, Latest Techniques for Finding & Recruiting Truck Drivers. Here he mentions that recruiters get distracted with finding drivers online and forget to call them. This leads to poor results.

If a recruiter is not on the phone trying to bring drivers into the door then they need to be focused on orientation, building trust with drivers, and retention. Articles by CDL Training Spot, and Tenstreet discuss what it takes to be a successful driver recruiter. Neither article mentions anything about learning digital marketing strategies that find qualified drivers online.

Every work related task that the recruiter does needs to be directly related to speaking with potential drivers, getting drivers through orientation, and retaining top talent. Anything else the recruiter does is not optimizing their time.

Team of digital marketers

Recruiters are NOT Digital Marketers

Recruiters should not have anything to do with implementing a driver focused digital marketing strategy. Digital marketing and driver recruiting are two fields that require an immense amount of time and attention to detail.

An effective digital campaign will involve technical strategies such as social media interaction, geofencing, mobile-first design, and building a recruitment landing page. Randall Reilly wrote an article on the Top Four Digital Trends for Recruiting Truck Drivers. According to the article the top trends are: mobile, social, video, and hot topics. Do you want your recruiters spending their days making videos and writing blog posts or contacting potential drivers?

Trying to recruit and market will lead to recruiters not doing either one particularly well. You do not want your recruiters to be a ‘Jack of All Trades, Master of None’. Set up an environment where recruiters can be master recruiters and another team can be master digital marketers.

Trucking companies need to setup an ecosystem where either an agency or an in-house team focus solely on digital marketing strategies that find qualified drivers. Then recruiters start smiling and dialing their way through that pool of drivers. Finally, the recruiters need to devote some time to orientation and retention. This system is how you set up your company for recruitment success.

Stepping up Your Driver Recruiting Game

Semi truck drives along road in the mountains. Driver recruiting filled the seat of the truck.

Truck Driver recruiting is one of the most critical pieces to a successful trucking operation. If not done effectively, it can cripple your business.  It is also one of the most difficult to master.

Figuring out how to meet the recruiting needs of your trucking operation can be tricky when you do not have the spending power that the mega trucking companies do. Here are strategies that will help you make educated decisions.

– COST OF DRIVER RECRUITING –

Knowing how to spend your money for recruiting may make or break factor for your company.

There are 2 ways to look at it: Spend the money on people or on process. According to Glassdoor.com, based on over 30,000 salary entries, the average pay for a driver recruiter is about $43k per year or about $3500/mo. If you dig a little deeper, you can see that the range goes from as low as $28k up to $72k.

At those salary ranges you could be hiring an inexperienced to moderately experienced employee that could manage your recruiting efforts. You could also look to an agency that will manage the process for you. There are pros and cons to both.

    1. The pro of hiring in house that you can keep your finger on the pulse of what is happening more. That person can have a first hand understanding of the operation and culture of your organization. The con is that you are limited to the skill set and ability of the person you hire. When hiring this person you are absorbing the cost of the employee in addition to the costs of advertising and marketing the positions you need to fill.
    2. The pro to hiring an agency is that with the right agency, you tap into recruiting abilities that you wont get with a single employee. Cons to hiring an agency – its scary. It is difficult to know whom you can trust and whether or not they can deliver what you need.

– TECHNOLOGY FOR DRIVER RECRUITING –

The process for looking for a job is so much different now then it was 10 years ago.

So what has changed?

People still have to find new employment, fill out an application, get a background check, and a million other things. So why is it that traditional forms of recruiting aren’t effective anymore? Technology is the answer.

With the Internet, potential drivers and employees are able to research you as a company, find out what you have to offer in compensation, hear what your employees say about you and generally assess whether they feel they would be a good fit for the job.

The best thing you can do as a carrier is to get ahead of the technological curve. Make sure your online presence is up to par. Also ensure your website portrays you in the best light possible and gives an honest impression of what it is like to work for your company. Focus on the competitive advantages you have to offer.

Another way to get ahead of the curve is to make sure that your company can be found. There are a lot of ways to do this: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), properly developed profiles on job boards and social media.

Make sure that your process for applying for the job is geared toward mobile users. Recent statistics show that more then half of all internet traffic is through mobile devices world wide, and that as much as 70-80% of truck driver applications are being submitted via a mobile device.

Knowing the direction that internet traffic is heading allows you to cater your application process to the mobile user.

Maximizing on these 2 things doesn’t solve the puzzle. However, it definitely positions you above most of the competition. As companies focus efforts on catering the recruiting experience to the driver and not to the company, the effectiveness of the recruiting effort increases.